reviewhttp://svendecabooter.be/tags/review
enBook review: Drupal 7 Development by examplehttp://svendecabooter.be/blog/book-review-drupal-7-development-by-example
<span property="schema:name" class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Book review: Drupal 7 Development by example</span>
<div property="schema:text" class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img alt=" Drupal 7 Development by example" class="image-article_teaser" height="221" src="http://svendecabooter.be/sites/default/files/styles/article_teaser/public/field/image/Drupal%207%20Development%20by%20Example_cover_0.jpg?itok=M2TLt-XW" title=" Drupal 7 Development by example" width="180" />In the book '<a href="http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-7-development-by-example-beginners-guide/book">Drupal 7 Development by Example</a>', author Kurt Madel guides the reader through the process of building a Drupal 7 website. Step by step we are building an HTML5 interactive recipe website. The book covers setting up content types, using Views to list recipes and create blocks, integrating the Media module, HTML5 theming and enhancing the website markup with Microdata. Furthermore widely used modules such as Webform, Fivestar, Views Slideshow and Features are covered.</p>
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<p>The book really takes a hands-on approach, and shows the reality of what is involved when doing day-to-day Drupal development and site building. When writing a book it is probably tempting to construct the examples in such a way that everything seems to work perfectly and without any headaches. I appreciate that the author of this book didn't take this road, but instead shows a glimpse of what real-life development is like: applying patches, browsing and interacting with the issue queues, writing missing functionality to existing modules, making decisions on whether to use -dev releases or not, and so on. Furthermore it is really nice to see that interacting with and contributing to the Drupal community is a recurring theme throughout the book, and not just a footnote.</p>
<p>The examples used in the book are very useful, but some of them might be a bit too complex for absolute beginners. So when reading the book they might want to stop for a minute and find more background elsewhere (e.g. drupal.org) about what's going on exactly. Though people with some knowledge of Drupal concepts will find it refreshing to see examples that aren't totally dumbed down, but provide some challenge instead.</p>
<p>A small downside to the book is that there are enough typos and small mistakes that should have been spotted in the reviewing process, for it to be a bit annoying (although granted, I tend to be overly sensitive to that). I also spotted a few practices in the book that I wouldn't recommend, such as granting Full HTML input format privileges too easily.</p>
<p>Overall this book is a great resource for aspiring Drupal developers who (preferably) might have done some theoretical reading on Drupal and its APIs, but are lacking real-life experience with actually getting their hands dirty. It's a nice companion to guide you through the process of actually building a Drupal site and getting to know the Drupal-specific contribution processes.</p>
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<span rel="schema:author" class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span lang="" about="http://svendecabooter.be/users/sven-decabooter" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">Sven Decabooter</span></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2012-08-25T07:16:15+00:00" class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sat, 08/25/2012 - 09:16</span>
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 07:16:15 +0000Sven Decabooter21 at http://svendecabooter.beBook review: Drupal 7 Webform Cookbookhttp://svendecabooter.be/blog/book-review-drupal-7-webform-cookbook
<span property="schema:name" class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Book review: Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook</span>
<div property="schema:text" class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img alt="Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook" class="image-article_teaser" height="222" src="http://svendecabooter.be/sites/default/files/styles/article_teaser/public/field/image/6488OS_Drupal%207%20Webform%20Cookbook_0.jpg?itok=UOumME1X" title="Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook" width="180" />In the book "<a href="http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-7-webform-popular-contributed-modules-cookbook/book">Drupal 7 Webform Cookbook</a>" author Vernon Denny takes us on a journey through the various aspects concerning the popular Webform Drupal module. Readers of this book are shown step by step how to leverage the power of this module, and associated other contributed modules that extend its functionality, to create everything from simple contact forms to complex, multipage and conditional forms.</p>
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<p>The book is written in the cookbook format, where each chapter contains a number of 'recipes' that users could pick out to perform a specific task they had in mind. I have the feeling that the book is somewhat forced inside this format, and doesn't suit it very well. Much of the recipes depend upon knowledge that was explained earlier, or configuration that was performed in earlier recipes. So I think readers will get the most of it by reading the book in a linear way anyway, and just skipping sections they might already be familiar with.</p>
<p>This minor criticism aside, the book covers an extensive range of topics related to webforms, that will surely help you get the most out of its functionality if you previously only created some simple forms with the module.</p>
<p>Lots of time is spent on form components: starting with a detailed overview of the default components that Webform comes with, over contributed modules providing extra functionality, such as the "Select (or Other)" module and "Options Element" module, up to writing your own custom Webform components.</p>
<p>I was also pleased to see that the topic of form validation got quite some attention, by covering the basic functionality provided by Webform itself, as well as the Webform Validation (a module written by yours truly) and Clientside Validation modules. With the help of useful examples, the author gives a clear overview of the possibilities that are available in the area of form validation.</p>
<p>Furthermore the book also covers other important topics in great details, such as working with and evaluating form submissions, importing & exporting submission data and writing custom modules to implement specific needs you might have for your form(s).</p>
<p>This book is primarily targeted towards site builders, not necessarily Drupal developers, so the required programming skills to understand what's going on are pretty limited. Readers without PHP knowledge should get pretty far in achieving their goals without writing any PHP, with the help of this book.</p>
<p>Overall a nicely written and detailed walk through the Drupal Webform universe, that should help you achieve more than you thought was possible with Webform after a first glance.</p>
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<span rel="schema:author" class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span lang="" about="http://svendecabooter.be/users/sven-decabooter" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">Sven Decabooter</span></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2012-08-02T16:41:01+00:00" class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Thu, 08/02/2012 - 18:41</span>
Thu, 02 Aug 2012 16:41:01 +0000Sven Decabooter20 at http://svendecabooter.beBook review: O'Reilly Javascript Cookbookhttp://svendecabooter.be/blog/book-review-o-reilly-javascript-cookbook
<span property="schema:name" class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Book review: O'Reilly Javascript Cookbook</span>
<div property="schema:text" class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><img alt="Javascript Cookbook" src="http://svendecabooter.be/sites/default/files/upload/javascript_cookbook.gif" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" width="180" />This book on Javascript follows the O'Reilly Cookbook series 'recipe' format, laying out a whole list of practical problems and tasks that (aspiring) Javascript developers are faced with, and provides the solution and background discussion needed to truly get the task done, and understand the reasoning behind it.</p>
<p>The first few chapters of the book start of by explaining the basics of the Javascript language, providing insights and tips around working with strings, numbers, arrays, loops, functions, events etc... A seasoned Javascript programmer will probably already be familiar with most of this functionality, but I found it interesting enough to keep on reading these 'basic' chapters, because the author gives a good background explanation and points to more obscure or browser-specific problems that arise when using these concepts.</p>
<p>The next few chapters go a little deeper into error handling, debugging, the different methods to accessing DOM elements, and adding interactive functionality to your webpages. The author took a very interesting approach with the chapter on interactive elements, by focusing highly on having the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attribute set baked in into the examples. I hadn't used this myself before, and found it truly fascinating to read how to make rich Javascript interactions accessible to all users, with only a few lines of added code in most cases.</p>
<p>The more advanced chapters in the book explain in great detail the newer cutting edge functionalities that are starting to be implemented by most browsers, including working with HTML5 audio & video elements and persistent data storage, SVG graphics, canvas elements, etc ... The book even covers topics that are just recently included (or even not included yet) in modern browsers, giving the reader an idea of what the exiting new functionalities are about, and how to leverage them. In the last chapter we leave the browser and explore Javascript in other environments, such as browser extensions, mobile widgets, etc..</p>
<p>One downside of the book is that it doesn't take IE6 into consideration anymore, which is unfortunately not the case in real life situations. Perhaps some more information on how to provide graceful degradation for IE6 would have been helpful.</p>
<p>Overall this book provides a lot of great insights and best practices regarding a wide range of topics, aimed at Javascript developers with various skill sets, and is very thorough and detailed in its explanations.</p>
<p><strong>Book details:</strong><br />
Title: Javascript Cookbook<br />
Author: Shelley Powers<br />
Link: <a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596806132/">Javascript Cookbook on Oreilly.com</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Cookbook-Oreilly-Cookbooks-Shelley/dp/0596806132/">Javascript Cookbook on Amazon.com</a></p>
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<span rel="schema:author" class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span lang="" about="http://svendecabooter.be/users/sven-decabooter" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">Sven Decabooter</span></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2010-08-15T08:00:25+00:00" class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Sun, 08/15/2010 - 10:00</span>
Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:00:25 +0000Sven Decabooter9 at http://svendecabooter.beBook review: OpenX Ad Server Beginner's Guidehttp://svendecabooter.be/blog/book-review-openx-ad-server-beginner-s-guide
<span property="schema:name" class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Book review: OpenX Ad Server Beginner's Guide</span>
<div property="schema:text" class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><a href="https://www.packtpub.com/openx-ad-server-beginners-guide/book"><img alt="" height="185" src="http://svendecabooter.be/sites/default/files/upload/openx.jpg" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" width="150" /></a>I've been wanting to check out the OpenX Ad Server open source project for a while now, but have never gotten around to it. This weekend I finally decided to install it and see what it's all about. I noticed <a href="http://www.packtpub.com">Packt Publishing</a> has a book called "<a href="https://www.packtpub.com/openx-ad-server-beginners-guide/book">OpenX Ad Server: Beginner's Guide</a>" that promises to guide me through building and maintaining an OpenX ad server, so I decided to get introduced to the project through this book.</p>
<p>The book is pretty straightforward, and doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge. Some basic knowledge of the LAMP stack and HTML might be advised, but that's it. </p>
<p>In the first chapter, author Murat Yilmaz explains how to perform the installation process to get started with your own OpenX website. The instructions are written for OpenX 2.8.3, though the most recent version of OpenX is currently 2.8.5. It seems like the installation process has been changed significantly between those versions, so that's something to be careful about. However most users should be able to complete the installation without any problems.</p>
<p>In the second chapter we go immediately through the whole process of adding a banner to an advertiser campaign, and include the invocation code on our website. This helps to easily understand the whole flow, without going into much detail for each individual step, since these details are fleshed out in the following chapters.</p>
<p>Chapter 3 to 5 takes the reader right into detail about the main concepts of OpenX: adding advertisers and campaigns, managing banners in campaigns and adding websites and zones to your OpenX installation. The author takes his time to explain how everything works, and repeats the steps taken after each chapter.</p>
<p>In the 6th chapter we go about creating channels in OpenX. I feel this chapter could have used some more in depth information, since the purpose of this functionality wasn't immediately clear to me. Perhaps some hands on experimentation with the feature will clear things up a little bit more.</p>
<p>Chapter 7 and 8 are focussed on how to use the user management functionalities in OpenX, to give targeted access to your managers, advertisers and website maintainers for managing the parts of the ad system that are relevant to them.</p>
<p>In the ending chapters the author gives us more details on how to keep our OpenX installation up to date, and how to easily view and export reports about our advertisement server.</p>
<p>There were some minor details that bugged me while reading the book, such as the spelling and language mistakes that appeared a bit too often, and the fact that the "What just happened" block seemed rather obsolete in smaller chapters, since it repeats what I read a minute ago (even though I assume repetition helps really novice users to better understand everything, it kind of annoyed me).</p>
<p>Overall I can conclude that this book provides an easily understandable step-by-step guide to help you set up an advertisement server to control the ads on your website(s) in a professional way. The concrete examples and use cases made it a nice read and a great starting point to get me interested in this open source product.</p>
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<span rel="schema:author" class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span lang="" about="http://svendecabooter.be/users/sven-decabooter" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" xml:lang="">Sven Decabooter</span></span>
<span property="schema:dateCreated" content="2010-07-13T05:47:55+00:00" class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden">Tue, 07/13/2010 - 07:47</span>
Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:47:55 +0000Sven Decabooter6 at http://svendecabooter.be